“I wasn’t.”

“No?”

“No. Twelve of the original Walkers used the April 31st backout. I was number twelve, backup. I got the call just past 11 PM four days ago.”

“Jesus! Is that so?”

“Uh-huh. That close.”

“Doesn’t it make you… bitter?”

McVries only shrugged.

Garraty looked at his watch. It was 3:02. It was going to be all right. His shadow, lengthening in the afternoon sun, seemed to move a little more confidently. It was a pleasant, brisk spring day. His leg felt okay now.

“Do you still think you might just… sit down?” he asked McVries. “You’ve outlasted most of them. Sixty-one of them.”

“How many you or I have outlasted doesn’t matter, I think. There comes a time when the will just runs out. Doesn’t matter what I think, see? I used to have a good time smearing away with oil paints. I wasn’t too bad, either. Then one day-bingo. I didn’t taper off, I just stopped. Bingo. There was no urge to go on even another minute. I went to bed one night liking to paint and when I woke up it was nowhere.”

“Staying alive hardly qualifies as a hobby.”

“I don’t know about that. How about skin divers? Big-game hunters? Mountain climbers? Or even some half-wilted millworker whose idea of a good time is picking fights on Saturday night? All of those things reduce staying alive to a hobby. Part of the game.”

Garraty said nothing.

“Better pick it up some,” McVries said gently. “We’re losing speed. Can’t have that.”

Garraty picked it up.

“My dad has a half-ownership in a drive-in movie theater,” McVries said. “He was going to tie me and gag me down in the cellar under the snack concession to keep me from coming, Squads or no Squads.”

“What did you do? Just wear him down?”

“There was no time for that. When the call came, I had just ten hours. They laid on an airplane and a rental car at the Presque Isle airport. He ranted and raved and I just sat there and nodded and agreed and pretty soon there was a knock on the door and when my mom opened it, two of the biggest, meanest-looking soldiers you ever saw were standing on the porch. Man, they were so ugly they could have stopped clocks. My dad took one look at them and said, 'Petie, you better go upstairs and get your Boy Scout pack.'” McVries jolted the pack up and down on his shoulders and laughed at the memory. “And just about the next thing any of us knew, we were on that plane, even my little sister Katrina. She’s only four. We landed at three in the morning and drove up to the marker. And I think Katrina was the only one who really understood. She kept saying 'Petie’s going on an adventure.'” McVries flapped his hands in an oddly uncompleted way. “They’re staying at a motel in Presque Isle. They didn’t want to go home until it was over. One way or the other.”

Garraty looked at his watch. It was 3:20.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For saving your life again?” McVries laughed merrily.

“Yes, that’s just right.”

“Are you sure that would be any kind of a favor?”

“I don’t know.” Garraty paused. “I’ll tell you something though. It’s never going to be the same for me. The time limit thing. Even when you’re walking with no warnings, there’s only two minutes between you and the inside of a cemetery fence. That’s not much time.”

As if on cue, the guns roared. The holed Walker made a high, gobbling sound, like a turkey grabbed suddenly by a silent-stepping farmer. The crowd made a low sound that might have been a sigh or a groan or an almost sexual outletting of pleasure.

“No time at all,” McVries agreed.

They walked. The shadows got longer. Jackets appeared in the crowd as if a magician had conjured them out of a silk hat. Once Garraty caught a warm whiff of pipesmoke that brought back a hidden, bittersweet memory of his father. A pet dog escaped from someone’s grasp and ran out into the road, red plastic leash dragging, tongue lolling out pinkly, foam flecked on its jaws. It yipped, chased drunkenly after its stubby tail, and was shot when it charged drunkenly at Pearson, who swore bitterly at the soldier who had shot it. The force of the heavy-caliber bullet drove it to the edge of the crowd where it lay dull-eyed, panting, and shivering. No one seemed anxious to claim it. A small boy got past the police, wandered out into the left lane of the road, and stood there, weeping. A soldier advanced on him. A mother screamed shrilly from the crowd. For one horrified moment Garraty thought the soldier was going to shoot the kid as the dog had been shot, but the soldier merely swept the little boy indifferently back into the crowd.

At 6:00 PM the sun touched the horizon and turned the western sky orange. The air turned cold. Collars were turned up. Spectators stamped their feet and rubbed their hands together.

Collie Parker registered his usual complaint about the goddam Maine weather.

By quarter of nine we’ll be in Augusta, Garraty thought. Just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to Freeport. Depression dropped over him. What then? Two minutes you’ll have to see her, unless you should miss her in the crowd-God forbid. Then what? Fold up?

He was suddenly sure Jan and his mother wouldn’t be there anyway. Just the kids he had gone to school with, anxious to see the suicidal freak they had unknowingly nurtured among them. And the Ladies' Aid. They would be there. The Ladies' Aid had given him a tea two nights before the Walk started. In that antique time.

“Let’s start dropping back,” McVries said. “We’ll do it slow. Get together with Baker. We’ll walk into Augusta together. The original Three Musketeers. What do you say, Garraty?”

“All right,” Garraty said. It sounded good.

They dropped back a little at a time, eventually leaving the sinister-faced Harold Quince to lead the parade. They knew they were back with their own people when Abraham, out of the gathering gloom, asked: “You finally decide to come back and visit the po’ folks?”

“Je-sus, he really does look like him,” McVries said, staring at Abraham’s weary, three-day-bearded face. “Especially in this light.”

“Fourscore and seven years ago,” Abraham intoned, and for an eerie moment it was as if a spirit had inhabited seventeen-year-old Abraham. “Our fathers set forth on this continent… ah, bullshit. I forget the rest. We had to learn it in eighth grade history if we wanted an A.”

“The face of a founding father and the mentality of a syphilitic donkey,"' McVries said sadly. “Abraham, how did you get into a balls-up like this?”

“Bragged my way in,” Abraham said promptly. He started to go on and the guns interrupted him. There was the familiar mailsack thud.

“That was Gallant,” Baker said, looking back. “He’s been walking dead all day.”

“Bragged his way into it,” Garraty mused, and then laughed.

“Sure.” Abraham ran a hand up one cheek and scratched the cavernous hollow under one eye. “You know the essay test?”

They all nodded. An essay, Why Do You Feel Qualified to Participate in the Long Walk?, was a standard part of the Mentals section of the exam. Garraty felt a warm trickle on his tight heel and wondered if it was blood, pus, sweat, or all of the above. There seemed to be no pain, although his sock felt ragged back there.

“Well, the thing was,” Abraham said, “I didn’t feel particularly qualified to participate in anything. I took the exam completely on the spur of the moment. I was on my way to the movies and I just happened past the gym where they were having the test. You have to show your Work Permit card to get in, you know. I just happened to have mine with me that day. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered to go home and get it. I just would have gone on to the movies and I wouldn’t be here right now, dying in such jolly company.”

They considered this silently.

“I took the physical and then I zipped through the objective stuff and then I see this three-page blank at the end of the folder. 'Please answer this question as objectively and honestly as you can, using not more than 1500 words,' oh holy shit, I think. The rest of it was sort of fun. What a bunch of fucked-up questions.”